


When the Sun Shines More Years than Fear

by TehanuFromEarthsea



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Every light must cast a shadow, F/M, Moral Dilemmas, Reylo - Freeform, the price of freedom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 08:02:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11732934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TehanuFromEarthsea/pseuds/TehanuFromEarthsea
Summary: With Kylo in prison and the galaxy at peace, everyone should be happy.Rey is the New Republic's peacemaker. As the living emblem of the Light, and beloved everywhere she goes, Rey should be happiest of all.And yet...There is always a price to pay, and as time goes on, Rey begins to question the bargain she's made with the Force.





	When the Sun Shines More Years than Fear

**Author's Note:**

> This is my story for vol. 1 issue 2 of the Reylo Short Story Collection. The theme for this issue was was The Choice, and one of the great benefits of being in this collection was the gift of being paired with an artist, in this case Terapid. It's worth checking out the RSSC page just to see all the fantastic art, as well as all the other stories that were submitted. 
> 
> You can see this story with Terapid's wonderful artwork on [page 227 of the collection here](http://reyloshortstorycollection.tumblr.com/post/163748114625/without-further-ado-we-present-to-you-volume-1)

 

Rey’s cloak slides heavily to the floor, making an expensive puddle of fur on the polished wood. It is the evening of a long day of difficult negotiations, and Rey had felt the need to dress for the challenge. Her golden synthsilk dress, tailored to fit like a second skin, flows like water as she paces the room. The bindings on her arms are of the softest cream leather, studded with jewels. Her own reflection in the room’s many mirrors catches her by surprise. _Who is this in the room with me?_

It’s an outfit that Poe and Finn have teased her about in the past, after catching sight of her wearing it on the Holonet. “Saw you on the news at the Codia Treaty Signing. You looked very fancy. Are you Queen of the Galaxy yet?”

But Rey doesn’t take that kind of joke even from her oldest friends. “I’m just a governor, and I’m only that when I get elected. I’m a negotiator. I work for the New Republic.”

But she’s more than her title, and there are times when she dresses to remind people of the real power she holds. She is the Peacemaker. The Lightbringer. It’s her fame in the War that makes them listen to her, the girl from Jakku; it’s the Force that makes them see reason. Both demand a certain dignity in her dress.

Alone for the first time since early morning, she strips off her arm binders with impatient movements, wriggles out of the constricting dress, stretches luxuriously. Today hasn’t been all bad.

The real work came beforehand: weeks of negotiations getting the Chiss to agree to being in the same room as Rey’s delegation from the Republic. Once they were there, Rey did what she always does, used the Force to allow each side to see the other’s point of view a little better.

_Walk a mile in their shoes. Learn a little history…_

_All will be well_. This latest treaty will be signed, too. She can sense it in the future, just as she sensed the tendrils of sympathy and curiosity growing between the negotiating parties this afternoon.

All will be well indeed. And yet this is not the only thing she can feel in the Force. Deep below, as though transmitted through the soles of her feet, she can feel the pulse of the planet. It stutters briefly then resumes, but with a slower, dragging beat.

 _Not here, too!_ Rey’s breath hisses between her teeth and she shuts her eyes for a second as if she could shut off her Force senses that way. Of course, it’s everywhere. Stupid to hope otherwise.

Later, after a bath, she wraps a robe around herself and stands on the balcony of the luxury suite assigned to her. It is dusk, and the most dominant feature in Esfandia’s sky is the Utegetu Nebula. From this distance it’s a beautiful lacework ornament that sheds soft light on the rather humble city of low buildings beneath her. Quite an out-of-the way, nothing place for such an historic treaty, but it’s what the Chiss wanted.

C3PO comes out to join her, carrying a glass of Andoan wine. His mechanical gait is a little more staggery than usual.

“You’re getting old, my friend,” she says. “Let me take a look at your gyro systems…” She starts to bend down for a closer look at his leg joints.

“Mistress Rey, I have run a self-diagnostic, and they are indeed in sub-optimal condition. But my repair can wait until we return to Ahch-To. How much longer do you expect your mission to last?”

“Another week of this and I should be done. But I want to visit Poe and Finn on the way home. Sit down, I’ll fix your legs.” Rey hurries to get her toolkit, an old, scruffy bag of bantha-hide leather that looks out of place among her expensive luggage. Nevertheless, she travels nowhere without it. A moment later she and the droid are sitting on the floor in companionable silence, facing each other, while Rey dismantles his knees.

“What have you heard from the other droids while we’re here, Threepio?” asks Rey, once she’s found the source of C3PO’s stiffness and worked the joint back into line.

“We are not here to pry into the affairs of the Esfandians,” says C3PO. “Might I remind you that they are merely hosting this conference?”

“Well, officially. But go on. I know you hear things, Threepio. You’d make a brilliant spy. And it doesn’t hurt to learn things. I don’t know anything about Esfandia.”

“Well, I _never!_ Spy? I don’t know how to respond to that,” says C3PO primly.

Rey laughs and pats his metal leg. “You know what I mean. I value your powers of observation.”

Mollified, C3PO continues. “I did take a little stroll around this morning. All seems peaceful. I passed a school. Younglings were reciting their lessons obediently. There seems to be little poverty. The local droids tell me life is easy.”

“Then we’ll certainly leave as soon as the treaty’s signed. We’re not needed here for anything else.”

Later, lying on the wide bed, she feels how the whole planet slumbers under a blanket of peace, secure in the light side of the Force. She hardly needed C3PO to confirm it. She values his reassurance, though. Under that shiny golden exterior is a droid whose rugged processors have seen more of war and peace than most.

Rey also doesn’t need to call up local data on her holopad to know another thing about Esfania. Among those obedient children, those successful businessmen, those citizens with fulfilled lives, there are some who will decide that they’ve had enough. Quietly and with no fuss, they’ll take themselves out of it. It’s the same everywhere.

And the number is growing every year.

\- - -

A standard week later, Rey drinks tea sitting on the hillside that Poe and Finn’s work has reclaimed as an orchard. Up here, trees above and below, they’re lost in a world of blossom; blossoms spangle the blue sky above them. One falls, white tinged with pink, and catches in Finn’s hair. Since leaving the military, Finn’s let his hair grow out into an exuberant wiry bush, and the blossom shines there like a natural part of him. A god of growing things, Rey thinks. Poe smiles, perhaps thinking the same, and lifts the blossom off with a fingertip.

“It’ll be a good crop again this season, if the weather is kind,” Finn says.

There’s a short silence, and the happy words, for some reason, seem heavy. Of course the weather will be kind. Yavin Four’s weather systems are completely reliable these days.

“We’ll have to spray for furrus rot soon,” says Poe.

Looking at nothing in particular, Finn says, “Sometimes I get tired of it, though. I could just put my tools down and let the trees be. Seems a lot of work.”

“Even you,” says Rey in a dull voice.

“What do you mean?” asks Poe quickly.

But Finn understands her, as he always does. “No, don’t worry. I’m not joining them!” He glances over at Poe. “You know, those people that lie down and die for no reason. Not me!” He gives them both a smile, but it falls a long way short of his usual warmth. There’s something in his face Rey doesn’t want to see, and she looks away. “Sometimes I understand why they do it, though,” he adds quietly, after a moment.

Poe smiles sadly. “We grew up with the war. We’re not used to these times.”

“That’s what a lot of people tell me,” Rey says. “Life is good, but they have no plans…”

“Well, but the future’s in safe hands,” Poe says. “You see the young people coming along. They’re so grounded. They’ve never seen war. They believe in fairness. They don’t question it.”

“It’s like the air they breathe,” Finn adds.

Another silence, filled with quiet insect sounds. Finn pokes a stick at the ground, making patterns. At last he looks up at Rey. “Haven’t you found a boyfriend yet? You must meet enough people, going all over the galaxy like you do.”

Rey smiles. “Don’t worry about me.”

“You told us you were going to have six kids once.”

“I’m not alone unless I want to be,” she says firmly. Her smile becomes a little forced.

“So, what then? Anybody we should know about?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve been with some lovely men. Mon Mothma’s nephew, Malbus - we were seeing each other a lot. Moving in the same circles, that kind of thing. He’s the only one of her family that went into politics. Named after one of the Rogue One heroes.”

“I’ve heard of him. A credit to his name and his family, they say,” says Poe.

“A straight-up good, honest man. No games, just truth,” says Rey.

“So, why…?” asks Finn.

Rey doesn’t answer, and he doesn’t press it. After a while she doubles back to answer Finn’s first question instead. “I have a score of young padawans visiting a couple of times a year for training. That’s enough children for me.”

\- - -

Yavin Four is always too humid for Rey’s liking. And though she’s welcome at Poe and Finn’s - more than welcome, she’s loved there - she has to get away from the little worm of envy that gnaws at her when she spends more than a few days with them. They’re so happy together, so solid.

_I could have had that._

With who, though?

So it’s good to blast away, feel the freedom of space in front of her. Rey flips the switches and dials of the controls with the same certainty as always. Her ship is one of the latest Lancer-class pursuit craft, painted in the official livery of the New Republic. It’s fast, and as always, her heart lifts as she soars into the black.

Yet even in the rush of release, she feels that faint, disquieting loss of balance, as though the ship wants to tip to the left. Out of habit, her eyes scan the readouts. She’s learned to ignore the instinctive urge to compensate. The readouts tell her the ship is dead level and true on its course, as always.

It’s worse when she reaches hyperspace. The universe is tilting, and she has the illusion that her ship will slide off to one side. It’s done this ever since she defeated the dark side and won the War.

Anywhere she goes in the galaxy, she feels it. That pull, sucking her in one direction only. To her evil star, her black hole, the core of darkness that waits for her return.

Does he wait for her?

He has nothing else to wait for, locked in his cell.

\---

People wanted him punished. They wanted him dead. Slowly and excruciatingly killed, in some cases.

In the early days of her first governorship, Rey went on the galaxy-wide Holonet to explain why the New Republic would not have him executed.

“There is no need. We have purged the galaxy of the evil brought by the dark side of the Force. The light has won. What darkness is left, has only one place to go. It is in him and around him. Everything you suffered is in there with him.”

_How smug I was, back then._

Though that speech is often replayed on the history channel, she won’t watch it, ever.

\---

Alone of all people in the galaxy, Kylo Ren wakes up every day with something to fight. Rey often wonders how long she could survive the battles he faces, alone in this place.

When she visits, his cell seems pleasant enough to her physical sight: carpeted, the furniture plain but not uncomfortable, lit by panels showing scenes of some forested world. There’s a gym station in one corner where he can work his muscles, and a treadmill placed in front of a glowpanel of ever-receding vistas, so he can run towards a horizon he will never reach. He’s given vitamin D to make up for the sunlight that will never touch his skin.

The cell is deep under the surface of Rey’s island on Ahch-To. The same concentration of kyber crystals that made the place a Jedi Temple, the same alignment of kyber nodes that shielded Luke from hostile Force users for so long, also operates to create the only field in the galaxy strong enough to hold Kylo captive.

To her Force senses, the cell is a buzzing darkness filled with the fever dreams of warlords, the bloodlust of Sith warriors, the death screams of a million beings dying in pain and loneliness. Somehow Kylo has contended with this, not once, but a thousand times. Every day, he makes a truce with madness.

There’s a set of electrodes coiled on his pillow: a direct current that will jump-start his sleep, vaulting him straight past his nightmares. Without it, he would not sleep at all. But the trickle of current does not run all night, because the human body cannot survive without dreaming. A part of the night he must be defenceless, and endure somehow.

He is no longer the high-hearted, hot-blooded warrior she met all those years ago. He’s thinner, his muscles more wiry than massive, his great bent blade of a nose and outsized cheekbones sharp under translucent skin. He could be mistaken for a monk of some religious order; he is always studying, reading, and watching things from the hundreds of datacubes neatly stacked on his shelves. History, mainly, and philosophy, along with the classics of a hundred cultures. He notes down his own thoughts about them sometimes in a shorthand so sparse that it resembles poetry.

Thus armed, he defeats the demons of darkness that inhabit his cell.

He has never asked her for anything. He is still every inch a warrior.

\---

Another planet, another conference. A core world this time, and Rey’s duties are largely ceremonial. She’s a vision in soft, floating sea-green gauze, though the lightsaber makes an odd lump against her hip. The lightsaber’s largely ceremonial too, these days.

Aside from training, the last time she used it seriously was during a meeting with the Hutt crime lords five years ago. A flourish of lightsaber work was necessary at the time: a statement. Since then, the New Republic has found better ways to dismantle the Hutt crime syndicates. Removed their markets. Opened up education to their younglings.

It turns out that even Hutts get tired of being crime lords. It’s stressful. The young Hutts are drifting away, finding secure and lucrative futures within lawful New Republic economies. The older generation seems to be all for it.

Afterwards, Rey is taken on the tour of the host city’s tourist attractions. It prides itself on its culture, and she is shown half a dozen monuments and galleries. She spends the most time in the workshop of a woman who blows flameglass. It’s a sunny, high-ceilinged room whose heart is the furnace where she does her work. The light glows softly on the pastel-coloured orbs that hang, grouped artistically around the room.

“How beautiful!” Rey says.

The artist ducks her head in thanks, wiping sooty, sweat-slicked hands on a rag. Rey’s party has arrived early, or the woman has lost track of time, Rey thinks, because the artist is still wearing stained work overalls. She pats at them helplessly, and tucks her greying hair more securely into the frayed bandanna that holds her hair out of harm’s way while she works. “I’m sorry, Your Excellency, I would have changed…”

“No, shush! That’s nothing. I’ve seen your work on other planets. I’m so pleased to meet the person who makes these!” says Rey.

“The globes are very popular these days. I’m lucky in my work,” the artist says, smiling at Rey. But behind the smile Rey picks up something else along the Force. A yearning; a memory of the past, when the woman lived among the rats in a warehouse above the smelters, breathing fumes day and night, spending her last credits to buy the raw materials she would wrestle with to make the wild, furious beauty she imagined.

There’s no interest in that kind of work, nowadays. Her eyes meet Rey’s with an unspoken plea, and Rey feels it through the Force - how the woman’s heart twists, remembering for a moment what it felt like to **_want so badly._**

\---

There’s an awkward moment after Rey’s visit to Mandalore, where she’s gone to speak about peace. A Sullustan delegation wants to thank her for her service in their sector the previous cycle, and they invite her to a presentation after the congress. There, on a beautifully decorated landing pad, is a little starcraft.

“You’re most kind. But I already have a ship,” she says, laughing. But at the same time, her eyes are feasting on the lines of their gift. It is a fierce jewel of a ship, a sleek little armed scout made by SoroSuub Corporation.

The Sullustan delegate looks crestfallen. “I’m so sorry. We thought you’d arrive in a big cruiser that could carry this home for you. Are you sure you can’t take it?”

“SoroSuub Corporation,” Rey says longingly. “I used to love working on these.” Even as a scavenger, she loved pulling them apart. So many times she’d stop to wonder why SoroSuub built something the way they did. When she figured it out she’d be filled with admiration at the elegance of their solutions. Their engines were delicious puzzles to her.

The Sullustan looks uncomfortable. He must be one of those people that would rather forget Rey’s humble origins. They only want the graceful diplomat with the aura of wealth that power confers on her.

“Have someone deliver it to Ahch-To for me,” she says. The Sullustan bows, relieved. He’s even glad to hear the autocratic note in Rey’s voice. She pulls a face as soon as he’s out of sight. _It’s like they want me to rule over them! And even more disgusting how easy it is to act like…what they want._

It’s a beautiful ship though.

\---

“I went to the opera on Coruscant,” says Rey, next time she visits Kylo. He stops his endless pacing to look at her sharply. He’s worn a figure of eight in the carpet.

“And how was it?” he asks drily.

“It was so well done. The singing was wonderful, the costumes…”

He tosses his head angrily. “Don’t lie to me, Rey.”

Rey closes her eyes for a moment, leaning her forehead on the transparisteel barrier between them. He always knows, somehow. But of course, that’s why she’s come here. She needs Kylo’s unflinching gaze sometimes.

“It was beautiful, but…” she says.

“But none of it touches you,” he finishes, looking at her sidelong through his curtain of hair. “The heartbreak, and the joy, the lovers happy at last…at the end, I bet everyone applauded politely?”

“Yes,” she whispers. “They did. Politely.” She looks up at him. He picks up a holocube from a table and turns it idly between his fingers. Some gory old drama.

“I wonder whether they still have storysingers on Jakku,” she murmurs. “They were usually these old women with cracked voices, but they could make the hairs lift off the back of your neck.”

“Probably all gone to their graves, and glad of it,” Kylo says lightly. “Who needs them? We all have our happy endings now.”

Rey hits her fist on the barrier. Even after all these years, it amazes her how easily he can get under her skin.

“Don’t!” she snarls. “I refuse to accept that from you, Kylo. People’s pain was real, Kylo. Real people suffered — the wars, the hate, the greed, children starving…It was ugly, _ugly,_ the way people lived!”

“Ah, shall we see the galaxy as a work of art? Then let’s have all the ugliness pruned out of it,” he says. He holds up a hand placatingly. “I don’t argue. Pain has certainly never made me a better person.”

He would know better than anyone else. He, who has to suffer it all now.

Pain and guilt and endless regrets, bound into the knot she cannot undo and must return to, again and again.

And so Rey puts her palm up against the transparisteel wall while Kylo lays his hand against it on his side. They stand, palm to palm, and she allows herself to be with him in the Force, sharing for a moment the weight of what he must endure all the time. This is the penance she does, though it would be so much easier to call him a liar and leave.

\---

During Rey’s second term as a legate to the Outer Rim, she spends half a year on Ryloth working on treaty settlements between the new Ryloth Republic and former slave takers of the galaxy. As so often before, it ends with a familiar scene: Rey standing on a dais, resplendent in gold and white, surrounded by smiling faces. In front of assembled dignitaries and a ring of holorecorders broadcasting to the galaxy, the Twi’lek leader accepts the Zygerrians’ offer to build and maintain climate-moderating technology.

“We welcome this gift that will tame the atmospheric extremes that have long troubled our people,” says the Twi’lek. “This reparative gesture will make vast tracts of previously uninhabitable land become temperate and fertile. We hope it will create a reverse diaspora, as freed Twi’leks throughout the galaxy are able to return to a planet better able to support them.”

Rey nods and smiles, but underneath it all, she’s exhausted. It takes steady faith in the Force to walk across the coals of conflict day after day.

 _I made the deal the light demanded,_ she thinks bitterly. Nobody else can feel how the Force twists under her sometimes. It’s worst when she’s tired. A sideslip, pulling her off balance.

Back in her consular quarters, Rey curls up on a pile of bright, luxurious cushions and motions C3PO over. “I am worn out, Threepio. Now the treaty’s signed, I could sleep for a week.”

“You have been working very hard. I would advise you to spend a few days on relaxing activities,” says C3PO. “You have not seen any of the wonderful sights Ryloth has to offer.”

Rey looks over at the many invitations she has been ignoring. C3PO has sorted them and stacked them on a silver tray. Daily, he scribes a dozen versions of, “Thank you for honouring me with your kind invitation. I regret to say that the press of my duties means I must decline…”

But now there’s time.

“Bring me those invitations, could you please, Threepio? Let’s look through them together.”

C3PO obliges, and Rey flicks through the pile of scented flimsies and sparkle-notes, with their curly dancing letters. One catches her eye: a holo of singing children, all wearing uniforms of a soft brown fabric. “The Yenna Zheelim Elementary School’s annual Festival of Light,” she reads. “Hmm….it sounds a bit like Life Day.”

The thought of spending a morning with Twi’lek children is refreshing. “Tell the school I accept, Threepio.”

Two days later Rey is the guest of honour at Yenna Zheelim. It’s a school such as Rey could not even have dreamed of as a child. Built on a low rise above a lake on the western edge of the town, it is surrounded by fields of soft lavender and green grass. The classrooms are low, too, nestling into the curves of the land. Rey stands with the teachers while Twi’lek children file into a courtyard where they stand, staring at her and jiggling with excitement before bursting into shrill and enthusiastic song. Some of them look like they’ll explode with the effort to be heard, their lekku vibrating with energy. Rey smiles at their earnest faces.

They all walk down to the lake. The children have made flower crowns, and they ask Rey to bless them before launching them into the water. Some ask for a blessing on a particular person. Sometimes it’s a family member, taken by slavers long ago and lost somewhere in the galaxy. Some ask blessings on Luke Skywalker or General Organa and other heroes of the war. Rey is touched. The children’s faces shine as brightly as the floral wreaths they hold. Afterwards they stand together and watch the flower crowns float into the lake.

The school principal, a short woman with deep olive skin, thanks Rey for attending. “It is so kind of you to come. I’m sure you have given them a memory they will cherish for their whole lives. They’re only young, but they understand at least a little bit of what you’re doing. It means a lot to us, Legate.”

“Thank you,” Rey smiles. “Though I doubt they’re very interested in Rey the Legate and her adventures around the negotiating table.”

The principal smiles back. “No, I have to admit, they think more about Rey with the Saberstaff of Light.”

Rey laughs outright. “I saw that. I visited your art rooms…I wish I’d done half the things I saw in their drawings!”

There’s kind laughter from the teachers standing around her.

“Do you mind if I wander around the school a little while on my own?” Rey asks the principal. “You have such lovely grounds, and I have been surrounded by worried adults for months. This place is just what I need right now.”

“By all means. Do you need somebody to accompany you?”

“No,” says Rey.

She has arrived without an entourage, as she usually does, and she relishes the chance to be outdoors by herself. Most of the Twi’lek children have drifted back to their classrooms, chattering and animated. Others have scattered to work under the feathery trees that dot the landscape, or to run around, their lekku trailing freely behind them. She might talk to them, or she might not. For once, she’s not obliged to do either.

The lake draws her, of course. It’s wide, with just a few buildings showing among the trees on the farther headlands. She can never see such a place without remembering her first flight into Takodana, her first sight of so much water and green. It’s a precious memory to her. The look of pity Han gave her. _To have lived without knowing this!_ She’d pretended not to notice it. It hadn’t seemed like the right time to explore what his sympathy meant. If only she’d known she’d never be given the time.

Silver, green, grey, the lake changes under the brief clouds of a windy day. Rey walks along the margins, trailing a toe in the water occasionally and thinking of Takodana.

Rounding a small spit, she’s surprised to see one lone Twi’lek child, a boy sitting hunched up by the water. The ground is rougher here, in fact she’s not sure if this is still part of the school. The classrooms are hidden behind a swell of land.

She would have remembered this child. His skin is a pale grey that looks ill to human eyes. Almost ghostly. She doesn’t think he’s one of the ones who came up to have his flower crown blessed. But still, he has a flower crown. An unusual one, red heart-star daisies and black roses. It’s striking, but rather sad. Elegant. She’s sure she didn’t see it at the blessing ceremony.

“That’s beautiful,” she says. The boy jumps slightly, looking round at her with wide eyes. When he recognises her, he looks, if anything, more frightened.

“Would you like me to bless it for you?” Rey asks in her gentlest voice.

The boy hunches up, clasping his knees tightly. He doesn’t answer, merely stares dubiously at the crown in his hands. But Rey is used to waiting. _If I can’t tame one nervous child…_

Eventually he sneaks her a nervous glance. “You—you like it?” he says.

“It looks… serious. But beautiful in its own way.”

“They said it was too dark.”

There’s a long silence, and Rey knows there is something heavy that is remaining unsaid. The flower crown carries some meaning.

“Is it for someone?” she asks.

The boy drops his head. “I don’t want to say.”

“It’s safe to tell me. I don’t know anyone you know, so your secrets are safe. And then I can give your person a blessing of the Light.”

“I don’t know if he’d want it,” says the boy.

Rey drops to her knees in front of the boy, feeling something like a shard of ice in her heart. Somehow she knows already. “Tell me,” she says gently, holding her voice as steady as she can.

“You won’t want to bless him,” says the boy. “Nobody does.” Rey sees there are tears starting in his eyes. There is no sense of the Force about him, Rey is sure of that. He’s just a boy alone, a boy the other children won’t play with.

“So why…?”

“It’s somebody who needs it more than anyone. He’s all alone. In the dark. Nobody blesses him.”

“A flower crown for Kylo Ren,” she says flatly, and the boy nods, gulping. Though his face is turned away, Rey knows she might read defiance there. And courage. “Give it to me,” she says at last.

“You must hate him more than anyone.”

“Give it to me.”

He hands her the crown, fearfully. He’s so sure she will tear it to pieces. Throw it to the wind, and curse the wind for good measure. Rey turns it around in her hands. It is a work of art, made with care.

“I call the blessings of the Light on Kylo Ren who was Ben Solo, in the name of this child before me.” She looks up at him expectantly.

But the boy can’t give her his name. He’s curled around himself, his hands over his eyes, sobbing as though his heart will break. Or was broken long ago, and he can only now weep for it.

“I call blessings in my own name,” Rey whispers hoarsely.

The boy beside her grows still, and she senses his bewilderment. “I would not see anyone abandoned,” she says in reply.

That seems to help. The boy regains his self control enough to help her place the crown in the water. Together they watch the wind take the crown from them across the water. When the boy seems to have swallowed most of his tears, Rey asks his name.

“Minhoth,” he says.

“What do you plan to do when you grow up, Minhoth?”

“My parents work in water reclamation for desert planets,” he says, without interest.

“That sounds like good work. Is that what you want to do?”

“I don’t know.”

None of these children know. Or seem to care. They are carefree, she thinks. Or without care. As though the future’s nothing to them.

“Are you ready to go back to school?” she says at last, standing up and offering Minhoth her hand. He allows her to pull him up. She puts her arm around him and they walk back together.

\---

By the time Rey returns to Ahch-to, she feels sick. She fights her way through a winter storm to land her ship, and goes into the exquisite palace built for her. R2D2 comes to greet her and C3PO, tweedling about a new ship that has been delivered for her.

“He put it in the west dock, out of the weather. It looked too valuable to leave in Ahch-To’s rains,” explains C3PO, though Rey can understand him well enough.

“Ah, the gift from the Sullustans,” she says dully. She can’t be bothered looking at it today.

“I am surprised you are not more interested, mistress,” says C3PO. “Though I detect that you seem unwell.”

R2D2 makes one of his rare cooing noises.

“Artoo is concerned. He asks whether anything unusual has occurred while you were away.”

Rey stands at a window, unseeing, and pulling her hair roughly out of its ties so it falls loose on her shoulders. There’s a lump in her throat. “Let’s just say there’s been another awakening,” she says drily.

It’s a filthy day, howling wind and a lowering sky. Rey manages five minutes lying spread-eagled on the white sheets of her tower bedroom before the noise drives her into the liftwell, and from there into the depths of the building.

And then, to the further depths under the building. Slowly Rey walks down the narrow stone corridor towards Kylo’s cell.

When she gets there, he’s lying face down on his bed. She can see his back heaving in shuddering gasps as he tries to slow his breathing.

“Is it bad today?” she asks in a low voice.

He turns to her, covering his eyes with his hand so she won’t see what it costs him to keep from screaming. His voice is low and husky. “Yes.” He concentrates on breathing for a while, bearing down on the pain. “I hoped you would come,” he whispers after a while. It’s a rare acknowledgement from him.

Things must be really bad. She puts her hand to the transparisteel and he sits up in a convulsive movement before walking to her with as much dignity as he can muster. She forces herself to look into his eyes as he places his hand against the barrier, trembling with the effort to maintain control. His skin is pale and he looks worn to the bone.

Kylo’s years of solitary reading have given him a wide vocabulary, certainly wider than Rey’s. But right now he looks at her with the dumb pain of an animal that cannot know the term of its suffering. She is afraid she will drown in what she sees in his eyes.

“Hold on. Hold on,” she says softly, opening the bond between them enough to take the load off him for a while. Kylo sags against the transparisteel wall.

After a time it seems safe to talk again. Kylo pulls away from her with a sigh, and goes to sit on the chair nearest to the barrier between them. There’s a touch more colour in his cheeks.

“Do you believe in Force ghosts?” Rey asks.

“Maybe. I don’t know. They don’t talk to me. Why?”

She shrugs, unsure how to begin. “I sometimes think I see your mother.”

Kylo holds very still, then nods. Not that she needs his permission to continue, but she doesn’t want to hurt him, either.

“I used to imagine I could talk to my parents,” says Rey. “I mean, I still do. But it’s like they’re frozen in time. It’s been so long. They feel more like these kind, patient …presences now. They don’t grow any older. But when I think of Leia, it’s different.”

“How?” asks Kylo, cocking his head as though listening to something past her words.

“She’s…independent. She doesn’t say the things I want her to say.”

“You wanted her to be a mother to you,” Kylo says matter-of-factly. “Everyone did.”

Rey nods. “Yes! They did!” She smiles, and looks up to catch the tail end of a sad smile from Kylo, too.

“How does she look?” he asks.

“I imagine her as an old woman. You know the type. Sitting propped up in bed by a whole lot of pillows, lots of wrinkles, her shoulders a bit rounded, but her eyes still sharp. Fierce. She wears her hair braided up in a crown. It’s silver,” Rey says. “Her hair, I mean.”

Kylo nods. “That’s pretty much how I imagine her too.”

“But she’s not always very friendly. Like she’ll _hiss_ at me to go away. ‘I don’t want to see you today, Rey!’ She seems really angry with me.”

Kylo snorts. “I bet. You’re her son’s jailer. But being angry was like her default setting, too.”

“That’s not fair, Kylo!”

“So what do you tell Leia? Your imaginary would-be mother. Who you’re stealing from _me,_ I might add.”

Rey winces. “You didn’t seem to want her.”

Kylo gives her a tired sneer. They’ve said much worse things to each other in the past.

“Anyway, that’s what I wanted to talk about,” Rey continues. “I had another one of these imaginary conversations on the way home from Ryloth. I told her I was doing what the galaxy wanted. The will of the people. They voted for it.”

“You’re really tactless sometimes, you know? Do I really need to be reminded of this?” He glares at her for a moment, then shrugs. “But all right, go on.”

“Well, she snorted and kept on laying out cards in her lap. Playing some sort of game. What would she have me do? I asked. But she just gave me a stony look from those black eyes of hers. Like she wasn’t going to speak any words I wanted to put in her mouth. It’s weird, how I can’t control what I imagine about her.”

“And you’re wondering if she is, in fact, a Force ghost?”

Rey shrugs. “It’s just odd.”

“Was that all?” There’s a hard edge to his voice.

Rey looks away for a moment, though it’s pointless. He always knows.

“She said, ‘I would have died for him. I would have _killed f_ or him. But maybe I was wrong to care so much.’ And Kylo, I felt _sick!’_ Rey stares wildly at Kylo, who is sitting hunched over, watching her steadily. “I couldn’t believe Leia would ever say that! I told her so and she just shrugged and said it was a different world now.”

“I don’t think I want to hear this, Rey,” says Kylo. His eyes are wide, shadowed with pain.

“She can’t just stop caring about you! Leia, of all people!”

Kylo lets out a small sigh. “Maybe we need something to make us care, Rey,” he says at last.

“What, you think we should bring back all those terrible things? The things I fought against all my life?”

Kylo shuts his eyes. “There’s been a respite. Maybe it’s enough.”

“What do you mean?”

“A generation has grown up without those evils. They might be able to handle things better than we could.” He opens his eyes briefly, his glance like a dagger. “We were killers, all of us. My mother too, and my father as well. Those were the choices we had then, it seems to me.”

Rey slides her back down until she’s sitting on the floor outside his cell, and they remain in silence together for a while. Finally Kylo says, “I was meant to bring balance to the Force, you know.”

“I know,” she whispers. “But at what cost?”

There is no answer to that.

As though in a dream, Rey walks down the narrow stone corridor away from Kylo’s cell. But before she reaches the lift that will take her to the light, she turns aside. There’s a room she’s visited many times in her mind, and only once before in real life. A windowless closet far underground. The locks and guards that hold Kylo Ren captive are operated from there. There is a sequence that must be followed, switches thrown, circuits closed, kyber crystals lifted from their sockets, wheels turned, chains hauled, doors rolled aside.

She’s shaking as she reverses the sequence. It is terrifying how cleanly everything moves, as though waiting all these years for this moment. Nothing has rusted, nothing sticks. The counterweighted crystals move easily from their sockets, the winches run without a hitch.

The Force tension that she always senses in this place as a high scream beyond the edge of hearing starts to let go. There is a real sound now, shrill, then sinking lower, ever lower, until it’s nothing more than a low shudder deep in the stones of the prison. A deep sigh, then silence.

Rey stands over the quiet machinery for a moment, head bowed. Then she goes to the door of the room, intending to go to Kylo’s cell, though she has not the least idea what she will say to him. Before she can enter the corridor, however, she senses something approaching in the Force. A moment later the corridor is filled with a darkness that pours between the walls with the power of a tremendous flood.

Though Rey’s feet are firmly braced on the stone floor, her heart feels as though it will be torn out of her, to be tossed like a leaf between the claws of predators and the mighty wings of terror. She tries to hold herself still against a storm that is rage, the will to murder, the will to mate, to give birth, and to seed death and life in equal measure. Passions shake her: hunger clawing at her insides, and lust, a sudden spurt of liquid fire between her legs. She feels the fierceness of all creatures that defend their young, all that strive for conquest, that lust for glory, that pursue oblivion. All of it passes through her and shakes her until she fears she will die of it.

“I am one with the Force and the Force is with me,” she murmurs, over and over, though nothing can be heard in the tumult around her.

Then it’s over, and the dim corridor is silent apart from the footsteps of Kylo Ren who walks at the tail end of chaos, pale as a ghost.

She doesn’t know what she expected - that he would be filled with such joy that his face would blind her, or that he would strike her dead. All these years, and she knows him better than she knows anyone, but she does not know this: What he will do, if he is given his freedom.

He stops when he reaches the doorway where she stands, still shaking. He is curiously calm, almost expressionless as he leans down to search her face with his dark eyes. In his silence and the feral intensity of his gaze, she is not sure he is human any more. Perhaps this is nothing but a shape, brimful of darkness. Yet he’s horrifyingly solid, standing so close she can feel his breath on her cheeks. Close enough to tear her throat out in one swift move.

“Why?” he asks. His voice sounds different without the transparisteel between them. Deeper.

She shakes her head. “I don’t know. It was the right thing to do. Something.”

He holds out his hand slowly, palm towards her. She places her palm against it, and a thrill runs through her body at the touch of his hand. So warm. He feels it too; she can see the shock of some emotion waking in his eyes.

“There’s a ship in the west dock,” Rey whispers, unable to trust her voice. “Take the lift three floors up, turn left, it’s at the end of the corridor. It’s fast.”

He seems reluctant to pull his hand away. But he does, eyes burning into her as he turns to go; such longing and relief as there are no words to express. She watches him walk away. Just before he turns the first corner, he straightens up and raises his arms in a wide stretch, punching the air. With a shout, he bounds out of sight.

Rey waits ten minutes before leaving the prison block and taking the lift back to her living quarters. C3PO and R2D2 come rushing up, burbling with excitement and alarm. “Mistress, what has happened? Am I to believe my sensors? It is a disaster! The galaxy must be alerted! Kylo Ren has escaped!”

She waves them aside violently, certain she’ll commit droidicide if they don’t leave her alone. “I can’t talk about it. But no, don’t contact anyone. It’s okay. I’ll explain later.”

C3PO continues talking, so she reaches over, flicks open his CPU panel and switches him off with a deft movement. R2D2 holds his probes up in a gesture of defeat when Rey turns to him.

“Remember, he’s a Skywalker too,” she says fiercely. “That’s where your loyalties should be!” R2D2 makes a dubious sound of agreement, but swears he’ll follow her orders.

Alone in her room at last, Rey collapses onto the bed and allows herself to cry at last. She has more tears in her than she thought possible, and with each sob she thinks her heart will break. Night falls and she is still there, eyes burning with tears, curled up in a ball and racked with sobs that seem to come from some inexhaustible well of pain inside her. She aches with it, down to the bone.

When it’s over, Rey lies flat on the bed, empty of feeling. It’s almost morning; dawn touches the delicately carved arches framing of her windows.

And then she feels it– the strange sensation that everything is tilting to right itself. Her bed, the floor, her island, the sky above, the galaxy beyond and the Force itself. Wondering, she stands up and immediately has to grab a chair for support, for she’s forgotten how to balance without compensating for the unevenness in everything. It’s gone. She stamps her feet on the floor, timidly at first and then hard. It’s certain. Everything is true and solid again.

It’s morning. She goes to look in her enormous wardrobe for something to wear for the day, fingering half a dozen swatches of jewel-bright fabric before throwing them aside with a cry of disgust. Searching among the shoes and boxes and fallen clothes, she finds at last, at the back of the cupboard, an old chest. Inside, there are her old clothes. Her war gear. Her scavenger wraps. She pulls them on. They’re stiff with disuse. But even their chafing is welcome and familiar. She picks up the staff propped in a corner, steps into the room and swings it around experimentally.

There’s a pile of heavy ceremonial robes on the floor. Rey pauses for a moment to regard them. Unconsciously, her lips curl back into almost a snarl. Then her face softens.

_Once, I could not even imagine such beauty touching me._

Picking them up, she folds the opulent fabric carefully and places the robes on the bed with a final pat.

C3PO knocks on the door, holding a tray. R2D2 must have switched him back on. “Do you require breakfast?”

“No, I don’t want breakfast,” says Rey, though she scoops up a roll and stuffs it in her mouth as she passes him in the doorway. She pauses for a moment, chews enthusiastically, and swallows. “But….” She looks at him, smiling. “I have remembered what it is to ** _want.”_**

“Are you going somewhere?” C3PO asks. Then his processors reach a conclusion, and he nearly drops his tray with alarm. “Mistress, no! It would be too dangerous to attempt to recapture him alone!”

“Maybe.”

Poised at the top of the stairs, Rey gives him an enigmatic smile. There is regret in it, and fondness, and something else. C3PO has seen it before, in the family he’s served for so long. This look of something wild and dark and apt to kindle.

“Don’t wait for me,” Rey calls, and runs lightly down the steps two at a time.

Minutes later, a streak of light splits the sky, and she’s gone.

* *


End file.
